Healthcare seating has been developed over the years to assist patients and infirm or mobility-challenged users in entering and egressing a seating unit while providing adequate comfort and appropriate support of a user's body. Generally, seating products are also developed to allow easy and dependable assistance from caregivers or other attendants addressing the user's immediate needs. Typically seating products may be designed such that a user may be easily assisted and transported in and out of one healthcare seating product to another seating product, wheelchair or bed product.
Transporting a user from one product to another is typically implemented by moving the user horizontally from one product to the other without requiring the patient to rise to a standing or partially standing position. This allows the user to avoid exerting himself/herself in an effort to stand up from a chair, sit down into a chair or walking, which could cause excessive fatigue or re-injury and ultimately affect the user's safety. However, in attempting to move the user horizontally into or out of a seating product, an armrest must be removed or repositioned so that the armrest does not obstruct the user's intended path of movement.